Wow.. that is some amazing work there, cincy...
I used to know a guy into fine watches... like, $10k+ watches... he sold them for a living... his business was "watch doctor" in Greenville nc... he may still be there.... he had a talent with precision and fabricating parts no longer available... amazing work.
He was friends with a cabinet maker and not your average cabinet maker. Before interwebs was a thing he had a company come in and set up cameras all over his shop... he just went about business as usual... the company would narrate what he was doing after chopping the film... he was paid handsomely for that... he was amazingly good at his craft... i watched progress on a chest that was several hundred years old and severely damaged. He lifted the coat of arms off of it literally peeling layer by layer and did it diagonal to the grain. He then recreated the parts missing, refinished, and presented it... ypu wouldn't have recognized it but it was still, mostly, a chest from the 17th century....
That guy came to my cigar shop one day at the behest of the watch doctor, and to look at some Eli Bleau humidors I had... desktop size... price range $2k to $5k... he carefully picked one up, looked it over, opened it... then tossed it back on the counter saying "trash"..... i was aghast... then, after getting his ideas, he made some of his own..... and comparing the ones I had with the ones he brought? Yeah, the ones I had were trash.... the only metal in them was decorative... instead of hinging as normal ones do they kinda sweeped open on a roller pin (of wood) near the bottom of the box.. it was an amazing thing to see.... he was a true master. I've no idea where he is now or if hes even still alive- he was old then, so, I kinda doubt it.
